- In 1852 Frederick Douglass, a former slave and a leader
in the fight against slavery wrote:
-
- "What, to the American slave, is your 4th of July?
-
- I answer: a day that reveals to him, more than all other
days in the year, the gross injustice and cruelty to which he is the constant
victim.
-
- To him, your celebration is a sham; your boasted liberty,
an unholy license; your national greatness, swelling vanity; your sounds
of rejoicing are empty and heartless; your denunciations of tyrants, brass
fronted impudence; your shouts of liberty and equality, hollow mockery;
your prayers and hymns, your sermons and thanksgivings, with all your religious
parade, and solemnity, are, to him, mere bombast, fraud, deception, impiety,
and hypocrisy-a thin veil to cover up crimes which would disgrace a nation
of savages.
-
- There is not a nation on the earth guilty of practices,
more shocking and bloody, than are the people of these United States, at
this very hour.
-
- Go where you may, search where you will, roam through
all the monarchies and despotisms of the old world, travel through South
America, search out every abuse, and when you have found the last, lay
your facts by the side of the everyday practices of this nation, and you
will say with me, that, for revolting barbarity and shameless hypocrisy,
America reigns without a rival."
-
-
- http://revcom.us
|
